Let’s explore together the ways that music can be used to support all areas of children’s learning and development...
Personal, social and emotional development
Music has the power to provoke a range of emotions and can help to release the hormone dopamine, which creates feelings of pleasure and motivation. Music is social; it brings people together and can be enjoyed through interactions.
Try introducing some group games which involves taking turns to tap out rhythms or collectively make a band with homemade instruments – build those social skills.
Practice mindfulness with your children – take some time together to practise your breathing and listen to some whale music or the sound of rain outside.
Physical development
When we hear music, we move our bodies. When children dance, they are learning about the way their body moves within the space around them, they are expressing themselves in a way that doesn’t need words, and they are just being free - there’s just no right or wrong way to dance!
They can create rhythm by clapping their hands or stamping their feet, use their voices to sing and play with sounds, or develop muscles when learning to play an instrument!
Communication and language
Music boosts the same neural networks in our brains as speech and language do – as these neural networks develop and new synapses form, the brain ‘grows’. By children hearing repeated patterns in songs and rhymes, they learn new words and hear how words sound.
Sing songs together. This might be those familiar nursery rhymes that children want you to sing over and over again, but it could be singing along to the radio or even making up your own songs.
Literacy
The rhythm of music lends itself to rhythm of language and learning words. Clap out syllables in new words; this helps children to listen and to pick out individual sounds that they can hear. The idea of rhyming words in songs and nursery rhymes leads onto those similar formats of rhymes found in books.
Playing instruments support the development of fine motor skills that children will use when learning to write. Provide children with a range of instruments to hold and manipulate their hands in different ways, building those muscles ready for holding a pencil.
Mathematics
Children sing along to number rhymes all of the time without even realising that they are learning about maths! There are so many songs that incorporate numbers that we can use to help children learn to count or explore with numbers. ‘Zoom Zoom to the moon’ even introduces the concept of counting backwards!
Music and songs also introduce the idea of patterns and sequences – both things required for maths! When a child learns and joins in with a song that has repeated verses, they are beginning to understand about predictable patterns and what comes next.
Understanding the world
Music doesn’t have to be a song or something heard on the radio; there is music all around us. Listen with your children to the sounds that they can hear in the natural world: the sound that the rain makes when it lands on the roof, the way that a windchime jingles in the wind or listen really closely for the music made by the birds when they sing!
Support your children to listen to music from a range of cultures around the world – discuss with them about the similarities or the differences. Songs such as ‘A tiny caterpillar on a leaf’ introduces concepts about change to children and how a caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly!
Expressive arts and design
As we have mentioned already, music allows children a way of expressing themselves through making music or moving to music. They can be creative by using instruments in different ways to make sounds.
From the ideas above, we can see that enjoying music can support children in all areas of development. Don’t use music as something just to fill the time – include it within your daily planning as a way for children to learn and build new skills.